Cold Climate Foundation Retrofit Energy Savings: The Simulated Energy and Experimental Hygrothermal Performance of Cold Climate Foundation Wall Insulation Retrofit Measures -- Phase I, Energy Simulation

High Performance Slab-on-Grade Foundation Insulation Retrofits

“…The simulation methodology deployed takes an additional evolutionary step over that used in two previous Building America projects. In the earlier work (Goldberg and Steigauf 2013;Huelman et al 2015), the BUFETS revision C (BUilding Foundation and Energy Transport Simulation) program was combined with the U.S. Department of Energy's EnergyPlus revision 6.0.0 whole-building energy simulation program to enable three-dimensional foundation heat transfer simulation. 1 In this methodology, BUFETS and EnergyPlus were decoupled so BUFETS was executed first to generate the foundation enclosure heat fluxes that were subsequently imported into EnergyPlus, which was executed next.…”

“…The secondary objective was to determine the magnitudes of site and source energy savings that are possible for real-world SOG insulation retrofits in which the <slab heat flow>/<site energy>ratio is generally less than 20% based on experiment (Goldberg et al 1994). Previous research for full basement insulation retrofits in real-world homes (Goldberg and Steigauf 2013) has engendered considerable skepticism about heating season site energy savings reported by Labs et al (1988). For example, these authors report heating season savings of about 10%-14% in zone 6.…”

Innovative Retrofit Insulation Strategies for Concrete Masonry Foundations

“…This simulation sequence was complex, involving multiple energy models from three separate programs. A complete methodology for this process, termed BEM, is given in Goldberg and Steigauff (2013). Only the key steps are summarized below.…”

Innovative Retrofit Insulation Strategies for Concrete Masonry Foundations

“…3. Evaluate the thermal performance of the retrofit insulation packages as well as the baseline (reference) case using the BEM energy analysis methodology deployed in the preceding foundation insulation project (Goldberg and Steigauff 2013) 5. Perform a hygrothermal analysis of the combined block wall and rim-joist assembly using the Wärme und Feuchte instationär (WUFI) 2D/equivalent soil layer (ESL) methodology.…”